In providing means for identification of missing persons, photographs, fimgerprints and dental chartings are commonly used. However, in the identification of a human body in which substantial decomposition has occurred, the use of fingerprints is often not possible, and in such cases dental chartings, if available, are often used.
Forensic odontology, the branch of dentistry which is concerned with identification of corpses by dental and oral characteristics often plays a major role in the identification of missing persons and victims of crime and accidents.
However, if the victim has no dental record, identification by such means is obviously impossible. This is often the case with young children that are missing. A very large percentage of children of pre-school age have never visited a dentist, and a large percentage of those who have visited a dentist merely have an examination for tooth decay or other dental purposes. This record is seldom specific enough to serve as identifying means. Unless some restorative, preventive, or orthodontic treatment is done that would provide a basis for identification, their dental chartings will have no distinguishable characteristics that might not be shared by many other individuals.
In view of the flouridation of public water supplies, which has reduced the amount of tooth decay in children, it is likely that in the future, even a lower percentage of children will have dental chartings that could be used for identification.
This is a serious problem, since according to Child Find, a national organization for finding and identifying missing children, between 20,000 and 50,000 children become missing each year under suspicious circumstances. Of these it is estimated that about 5000 are found and over 3000 murdered.
Although bite impressions of wax or other material are often made of a persons teeth, such impressions are used for indicating the location of the upper and lower teeth in relation to each other. Since they usually provide a record only of the occlusal surfaces of the teeth, and no information about the other tooth surfaces, such impressions generally do not give sufficient information for accurate identification, and to my knowledge, bite impressions have never been used for such purpose.